Kitchen Pictures - Before & During

The downstairs kitchen renovation began in September of 2007, almost one year after the initial purchase of the house and has been continuing since. The kitchen used to be on the stairway side of the house, but after much convincing by the parents we decided to switch it to the opposite side of the house.

I looked back for pictures that show just how bad the kitchen was, but being such an eyesore I wasn't excited to photograph it. Here is the best shot I have showing the kichen area before the renovation. Notice the kitchen on the stair-side wall, no downstairs bathroom, the old door, two windows, the lovely hole in the ceiling that happened one day before my parents visited, and the plaster & drywall on the stair wall (at least until this weekend).



I really wanted a bathroom downstairs, as there was only one bathroom in the house (unless you count the throne in the basement, which I'll get to later). I would have really liked to have an island, but putting a half bath in the middle of the house made the middle area pretty useless. A bathroom there would have left a width of about 6', too narrow for a table, making the house feel cramped. Now a half bathroom is fit in the back corner of the house allowing a real dining room. A lot of homes in Baltimore city have odd floor plans due to the skinny rowhomes floorplan here, so anything done to maximize the space helps. Here is a shot of the new kitchen with a half bath where the old kitchen was. Also notice the outlet and cable hook-up for my (eventual) swivel-mounted LCD TV to watch from the breakfast bar. :)



Since I couldn't have an island and a bathroom downstairs, we decided to put in an L-shaped kitchen with a peninsula coming out in the main area of the house. To lighten up the room I chose glass faced cabinets and had lights put in them. Glass shelves were put in the cabinets, and the glass frosted to diffuse the light. It looks pretty sweet, and when the triple-pendant light over the penisula is put in it will look pretty sweet.



Friday and Saturday the tile went in, so that looks pretty sweet. Definitely glad I went when the running pattern, and the 12x18" tile run along the length of the house. It helps elongate the room, methinks. The sign on the floor says "keep off", but I don't think Cat paid attention to it.



Some miscellaneous info on the kitchen. The cabinets are Kraftmaid, with Putnam maple doors in a Toffee finish. The upper cabinets are 42", with an angle crown molding above and a smaller molding on the bottom to allow for under cabinet lighting to be installed later. Next to the bathroom on the stair-side wall is a pantry cabinet that is yet to be installed, with the fridge going next to that. The old 28" back door was replaced with a 32" wide to allow more light and larger sized furniture into the home. The door is glass, with a plastic film that looks like frosting when installed. A window on the right was removed from the back wall as the new bathroom wall would have intersected in the middle of a window. The window was replaced with a smaller opaque casement window to bring light into the bathroom.